Monster Hunt

Generally:
This is the classic arcade game created by Maik Heinzig, and published by mhs-Studio. 
Players attempt to eliminate monsters, ghosts, bats and other baddies. 
This game is the first of a series. The next is "Monster Hunt 2" and the last is "Monster Hunt revenge", but this titel is unpublished. 
 
The full name of the game:

Monster Hunt is short for: Monster Hunt or the little Wonderland. 

Story:
Our hero Maxi Mini needs to rescue his girlfriend from the claws of the evil Popmuckel. His journey takes him through different landscapes and many dangerous situations. To acchieve his goal he should collect as many bonus items as he can to get more than the initial three digital lives he has. There is one extra life for each 99 bonus items collected. He should also pay close attention to specially marked stones, because touching one of those turns them into an "Atari" mark, which should be collected quickly. The more of these he collects the better his equipment will become.

Maxi will turn green after collecting one Atari mark; this allows him to destroy stones more easily and will also get him more points. Atari mark two will allow our hero to shoot at the smaller enemies and the thrid Atari mark will give him more time to explore levels. Mark four gets him an extra life and of course bonus points; should he be able to collect five or more Atari marks, he will get different extras and naturally more bonus points. If Maxi looses one of his lives, all previously collected Atari marks are gone as well.

The hidden entrances to the Bonus Levels is a special recommendation for our hero, as he can collect bonus hearts here with ease. Unfortunately, these entrances are hard to find.Sometimes an arrow will lead the way though. Since Mini must be rescued as fast as possible, time is very limited. If Maxi is too slow,   one of his lives is gone. The same happens if he touches a monster, ghost or one of the elements water, fire, earth (dust) or falls into the abyss. But there are also many useful items to find such as a secret door which skips the whole level. Too bad that these doors are invisible and therefore hard to find.

Popmuckel has placed some magic stones all over the levels. Should Maxi touch one of these, he is glued to the stone and it will cost him one of his lives. In the higher stages there are no neutral enemies anymore and life will get harder and harder for Maxi.

Available:
Monster Hunt 1 obtainable of Floppy Disc (1991) and Cartridge(1999). The Cartridge version is very rare ( prototype ). 
 
 
Re-released:  
In 2007 the game was re-released for PC as "Jump Jack". 

In gamecharacters:

Maxi - The hero

Mini - in the credits

Popmuckel - in the story

Eumel - a restless enemy of a different game

Joki - The Jokerman
 
Octi - one eyed Qctopus

Batzi - the brown Dog
 
Lots of monsters, ghosts, bats and other baddies.

 
Characteristics of the original version:

- No more than 10 lives are possible. If more lives have been collected, the message "Too many lives" will pop up and the game will end. This was implemented on purpose to make life a bit harder for users with a freezer module.

- But a bug in level design made it possible to reach more than 10 lives anyway. To do that a heart must be collected at the very left of the screen and the character must be moved to the left of the screen continously. If the heart item was placed very close to the edge of the screen the bonus collection did not stop and the player only had to take care, that he did not collect more than 10 lives.

 
Different to cartridge:

- The level bugs are fixed
- more Level
- other End with a little animation